Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Transit of Venus 6.6.12

Didnt give this much fore-thought, seeing the weather was so bad, but around 2-3pm the cloud peeled away.
An article in the local rag stated no-one alive has seen a transit in NZ, they come twice in eight years, every 100 odd years apart, the last one was in 2004 but you had to be on the other side of the Earth to see it, and the next one isn't due for another 105 years.
That was enough motivation for me.
The old boyhood telescope somewhere up in the attic would have taken too long to set up, wouldnt have a clue where the smoked sun-lens would be, so it was down to the workshop and the arc-welding mask. I used to map sunspots as a kid by projecting from the eyepiece onto a sheet of paper. I burned holes through a few bits of paper before I got things right, lucky I still got my eyes.
Actually, it took two welding lenses to shut the light down enough, and sure enough, there was little dot Venus. So there, I saw it.
Even tried taking a pic with the cellphone, Venus is the little dot down near the bottom, lol.
Rather fortuitous the sky clearing, just imagine being old Capt Cookie sailing halfway round the globe, if the weather had been inclement when he got here.

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